Recommendation: Enjoy this movie after the children have gone to bed. It is an adult movie appealing to adults for its message and character portrayal of our flaws and attempts to do better. Your child will not understand it and there are many better ways to spend your time together. Your teen simply won’t care about the story. The R rating is for sexuality and language. The four-letter words are barely noticed as the characters include them in common language, as I remember them spoken, not as expletives. Amy Adams reminds us every woman has a sensuality, and it isn’t related to the size of her breasts. Her character's consistent wardrobe of lower than low-cut outfits reminds us when you find a look that works for you, there’s no need to overdo it. No nudity thrill to be seen here. The opening scene of Christian Bale’s stomach and methodical devotion to cover his character’s bald spot could be listed as a gross-out feature, early on defining this con man’s attempts to present a better look than his genes allow. He cares, he really does.
Rating: I love this show. Movie critic Joe Neumaier describes the film expertly, “There’s a great fever-dream quality to David O. Russell’s American Hustle that instantly reels you in.” With our easily distracted moments of phone calls, family, pets, snacks, and a laptop computer to touch, a movie needs that draw to keep you coming back to the screen. Connecting to me on a personal level held my interest. During the 1960’s I was schooled by others, but I grew up in the 1970’s.
When you
reach your 18th birthday, it is a perfect time to reflect on what
you have learned to date, the facts of life you had no control over, and what
kind of person you appear to be. If you don’t like what you see, the next
decade, the 1970’s for me, is the time to work on you, as demonstrated by every
character in American Hustle. The
relationship to an actual FBI plot named Abscam
is simply a nice backdrop, not for historical accuracy. I remember the brief headlines of Abscam, but as with most headlines, it
had little to do with my real life in the Midwest of marriage, babies, and
choices. American Hustle also doesn’t
show the characters rushing off to college to find themselves, as young people
are told they must do today. They were simply trying to make a life with what they saw in
front of them. That is reality.
Within
the last decade, I relocated from a city to a more rural area of Iowa and had
to make the choice of driving great distances to see a first-run movie, or give
up my obsession with the big screen. Then Netflix
was invented. Now I am at the whim of their magnificent mailing system. I
simply list the movies I desire, and wait my turn.
Watching
movie trailers on YouTube is not how
I spend my available computer time. Instead, I often select movies already
recognized by award shows. When I find my tastes do not correlate with award
show voters, I enjoy the power that I still retain to turn off the television
after just a few moments and find something else to do. I simply place the
movie in our street-side mail box and within a couple days have a new one to
watch at my leisure.
American Hustle received several Oscar
nominations, piquing my interest:- Nominated for Best Picture; beat out by 12 Years a Slave. Haven’t seen it yet. Not sure I will. Obviously, it was well done.
- Christian Bale nominated for Best Actor, beat out by Matthew McConaughey, Dallas Buyers Club. Haven’t seen that movie yet, either. Looks depressing. Maybe later in the summer.
- Amy Adams for Best Actress; beat out by Cate Blanchett, Blue Jasmine. I like Ms. Blanchett but won’t see Woody Allen’s film. His sense of humor, poor life choices, and typical story portrayal has never appealed to me.
- David O. Russell for Directing; beat out by Gravity’s Alfonso Cuaron. I appreciate Russell’s choice to show a story and not use short editing blips to distract the viewer. Those blips make me feel old as someone else’s life flashes before my eyes. The choice to turn off the television has been taken to escape the overuse of editing. As a parent educator, I am concerned about the shortened attention-span of younger people who cannot stay on task to interpret correctly what is portrayed in front of them. Time needs to be devoted to reading the whole book, instead of relying on short reviews on websites, or Yahoo flashes. Forming your own opinion is a dying skill. Letting others form that opinion for you will be mankind’s demise.
- Eric Warren Singer and David O. Russell for Original Screenplay; beat out by Spike Jonze, Her. Never heard of Her. Probably won’t see it. I might see Bob Nelson’s Nebraska. Living in Iowa, Nebraska is a neighbor. (It’s to the west of us, for those map-challenged.)
- Production Design nomination to Judy Becker and Set Decoration to Heather Loeffler are worthy of mention. Since I remember the 70’s, I appreciate the subtle ways these ladies kept us in the decade without overblowing it. I enjoy Mad Men for the same reason. On this season’s opening show, the huge macramé hanging on the wall was similar to one I had created. Macramé was so easy. Some days I am easy to please.
- Becker and Loeffler were beat out by The Great Gatsby, Production Designer Catherine Martin and Set Decoration by Beverley Dunn – now that was an era of extravagance, and way before my time.
- Jay Cassidy, Crispin Struthers and Alan Baumgarten nominated for Film Editing; beat out by Gravity’s Alfonso Cuaron and Mark Sanger. Haven’t seen Gravity yet, but can imagine the extreme need for editing when the majority of the film is shot in front of a green screen. Note my above comments on American Hustle’s director Russell’s choice to keep the movie a story being told, not a bunch of blips – appreciate it.
- Jennifer Lawrence nominated for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role; beat out by Lupita Nyong'o, 12 Years a Slave. The view of Lupita’s performance demonstrated she really sold it. Great job. Jennifer Lawrence is such a sweet, beautiful girl, who came across as a primal, unintelligent young woman with the desire to better herself (I’ve read Wayne Dyer books, too) but will never understand why she doesn’t accomplish the task. I’ve known many like her.
- Julia Roberts, August: Osage County – won’t be watching this movie. Too much family dysfunction. Lived it. Don’t need to see it again.
- Loved the old music brought to life again. I danced and sang to those tunes in my younger years.
- Achievement in Visual Effects Oscar went to Gravity, of course.
- Michael Wilkinson nominated for Costume Design; beat out by The Great Gatsby. Michael did a great job, again without overkill. Loved the fur coats. That was a different era, indeed.
- Bradley Cooper for Best Supporting Role; beat out by Jared Leto, Dallas Buyers Club. Cooper portrayed his character well of self-interest to stand out from the crowd of the 70’s incompetent FBI. Sorry, FBI agents, in reality the 70’s were not your best decade.
I do love it when I can get lost in actors’ portrayal of their written character, such as a New Jersey Mayor played by Jeremy Renner, instead of my mind interrupting the movie to tell me, “Oh yeah, That’s Jeremy Renner who starred in The Hurt Locker – great job. Now back to the movie.”
Hope you find time to enjoy American Hustle, too.
